1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a connector, particularly to a connector connected to a connecting portion provided in parallel in a front-end portion of a flexible printed circuit board (hereinafter referred to as “FPC”).
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-342426 discloses a connector As shown in FIG. 6C of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-342426, a fitting portion 23c located on one end side of a lower arm portion 23 is engaged with an edge portion on one side of a main body portion 31, the other end portion of the lower arm portion 23 is inserted in an insertion hole 32 of the main body portion 31, and only an upper arm portion 21 is rotatably supported.
However, in the connector mentioned above, when the other end portion of the lower arm portion 23 is used as a contact, the lower arm portion 23 cannot follow FPC to be elastically deformed even if an inadvertent drawing force is applied to FPC (not shown). Therefore, in the connector, there is a risk of generating contact failure between FPC and the lower arm portion 23. Additionally, in the connector, it is necessary to make the insertion hole 32 in the main body portion 31 to insert the other end portion of the lower arm portion 23, which hardly achieves miniaturization in a width direction of the main body portion 31. Particularly, because large bending moment acts on the vicinity of the insertion hole 32, it is necessary to increase rigidity around the insertion hole 32. Therefore, it is necessary that the surroundings of the insertion hole 32 be made of a thick resin, which hardly achieves the low-profile connector.
In order to solve the decrease in contact reliability, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-71160 discloses a connector. As shown in FIGS. 2 and 4 of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-71160, a contact 14 is inserted in a base 12, and contacting portions 22 and 22 are supported so as to be able to follow FPC 40.
However, in the connector disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-71160, only a fixing portion 42 shown in FIG. 4 is provided to prevent drop-out. Therefore, unfortunately variations in assembly accuracy are easily generated to hardly obtain the connector having uniform operating characteristics.